Wequote in full a hectographed letter addressed to Zemstvoists, which
passed from hand to hand during the latest session of the Zemstvo
Assemblies (it has regrettably only just come into our
possession):

“DearSir,

“Thegrave situation in which Russia, the Russian people, and the
Russian Zemstvo find themselves today has prompted us to address this
letter to you, dear Sir, on the assumption that the ideas and intentions
herein expressed will meet with your sympathy.

“Thelong series of sad and distressing facts of which we have in
recent times been silent witnesses weighs like a dark cloud on the
public conscience, and every person of education is faced squarely with
the fateful question: is it possible to persist in abstaining from
political action and by remaining passive contribute to the growing
impoverishment and corruption of our native land?

“Thechronic crop failures and the intolerable burden of taxation
in the form of land redemption payments, non-assessable taxes have
literally ruined the people, leading to its physical degeneration.

“Thevirtual denial to the peasantry of even the faintest semblance
of self-government, the petty tutelage of official and self-appointed
representatives of ’firm government,’ and the artificial state of mental
starvation in which the people is kept by the uninvited guardians of
’the foundations of Russian tradition and law’ are sapping its spiritual
powers, its initiative and energy.

“Theproductive forces of the country are being brazenly plundered
by men of business in this country and abroad, with the gracious
connivance of adventurers who are gambling with the destinies of our
country. In vain is the ’beneficent government’ trying to have a series
of contradictory and hastily concocted measures take the place of a
spirited and systematic struggle carried on by economic groups in the
country. Official ’patronage’ and ’concern’ are impotent in face of the
evil forerunners of Russia’s economic and financial bankruptcy:
agrarian, industrial, and financial crises—the brilliant results
of the policy of chance and gambling. The press is stifled and deprived
of any possibility to shed light on at least part of the crimes that are
hourly committed by the upholders of law and order, against the freedom
and honour of Russian citizens. Despotism, senseless and cruel, alone
raises its voice authoritatively and reigns over the boundless expanses
of our ravaged, humiliated, and outraged native land, nowhere meeting
with a fitting rebuff.

“Withsuch a state of affairs, the government’s systematic mistrust for
the slightest manifestation of private or public initiative, the
activities of any kind of public associations, and in particular the
Zemstvo institutions—which the Russia of the sixties had hoped
would prove the corner-stone of a new realm—is quite natural. The
triumph ant bureaucracy has condemned the Zemstvo institutions to a
lingering death, and every year deals a new blow at their activities,
their significance and authority in the eyes of society and the people,
who scarcely distinguish between the Zemstvo and the bureaucratic
administration. The Zemstvo Assemblies have been converted into
bureaucratic social-estate councils, despite the clearly expressed
protest of all progressive groups in the country, and have lost all
connection with the mass of the Russian people. The Zemstvo Boards are
becoming annexes to the gubernatorial offices, and, losing in
independence, are gradually acquiring all the defects of a government
office. The Zemstvo election meetings have been reduced to a veritable
farce. The paucity of voters and their division into social-estate
groups, while depriving such meetings of the opportunity to serve as a
means for the expression, in the persons of the elected councillors, of
the various public interests, turn them into a battleground of petty and
personal ambitions.

“Therange of Zemstvo activities is gradually but steadily being
restricted. The Zemstvo has been deprived of jurisdiction in the matter
of food supplies. In the matter of assessments the Zemstvo has become
the executor of the orders of government officials. In the sphere of
public education the role of the Zemstvo has been reduced to practically
nil. The Medical Regulations drawn up by the Goremykin Ministry, while
not abrogated formally, hang over the Zemstvo medical service like the
sword of Damocles. The dark shadow cast by the government’s instructions
to the school boards has to all appearances been dissipated. But the
Zemstvo is in no way guaranteed against a reappearance of this shadow,
this time, however, embodied in the form of a law which would finally
destroy the Zemstvo general schools. Contacts between the Zemstvo
institutions of the various gubernias, the need for which has become
proverbial, are confronted with new difficulties in the latest Circular
of the Ministry of the Interior on this subject. Every step of the
Zemstvo as a public institution comes up against an intricate cobweb of
numerous circulars from the various ministers, and the Zemstvoist is
obliged to spend no little time, energy and wit on the thankless task of
untangling this web, if he wants to give effect to this or that
measure. The notorious Article 87 of the Zemstvo Statutes, and
particularly its Clause 2, places the whole of Zemstvo activities under
the Governor’s supervision. Gubernatorial investigations of Zemstvo
Boards are becoming ever more frequent; through the permanent members of
the Gubernia Board for Zemstvo Affairs, the government is
unceremoniously placing the Zemstvo under open surveillance. By enacting
a law limiting the right of the Zemstvo to levy taxes, the government
openly admits its extreme mistrust of
the fundamental right of the Zemstvo—the right to impose local
taxes. Owing to the interference of the Police Department, the best
Zemstvo officials, both elected and employed, are forcibly torn away
from Zemstvo activities. In the near future, the ministerial projects of
control of the Zemstvo’s financial operations to be exercised by
officials of the State Control Board and of the regulation of the
activity of the Zemstvo Advisory Commissions will probably be made law.

“Notonly are Zemstvo petitions being turned down, but they are not
even given consideration in accordance with the procedure established
for such cases and are casually rejected by the ministers on their own
authority. Under such conditions, it has become impossible to work in
the Zemstvo with an earnest belief in the fruitfulness of that work. And
we are now witnessing a process of constantly increasing impoverishment
of the Zemstvo forces and in particular of the Zemstvo executive
bodies—the Boards. People who are ardently devoted to the Zemstvo
cause are leaving the Zemstvo, having lost faith in the efficacy of the
work under the present conditions. And their places are being taken by
Zemstvoists of a new type, by opportunists who tremble in cowardly
fashion for the good name, the outward form of the Zemstvo institutions,
and who disgrace the latter by crawling and grovelling to the
administration. The result is an internal corruption of the Zemstvo that
is far worse than a formal abolition of self-government. The
government’s open campaign against the Zemstvo idea itself might lead to
widespread public indignation, which the bureaucrats fear so
greatly. But before our very eyes a camouflaged destruction of the
principle of self-government is taking place and, unfortunately, is not
meeting with organised resistance.

“Withsuch a state of affairs, the comparative insignificance of
the material results of Zemstvo activities is by no means compensated by
its educational significance, and the almost forty years of work on the
part of the Zemstvo institutions directed towards developing civic
spirit, social consciousness, and initiative may be lost without a trace
for the immediate future. From this standpoint, the meek and humble
marking of time by the opportunist Zemstvoists only facilitates the
inglorious and futile death of the great idea of the Zemstvo
institutions. The only possible way to lead the Zemstvos out of the
impasse into which they have been led by the system of tutelage is to
fight energetically against the absurd idea that a consideration of
questions going beyond the bounds of the minor details of local life is
fraught with national disaster. This bugbear, which, of course,
threatens no danger to the people or the security of the state, this
idea, the absurdity of which is cynically acknowledged by its supporters
(see Witte’s confidential memorandum, ’The Autocracy and the Zemstvo’),
must be combated by the Zemstvo through open and bold consideration in
the Zemstvo Assemblies of questions of national importance which are
closely bound up with the needs and interests of the local
population. And the more comprehensively, the more fully and
energetically the Zemstvo Assemblies consider questions of this kind,
the more clearly will it be disclosed that public consideration of evils
affecting the people does not threaten the people with disaster, but, on
the contrary, averts it, that the muzzle which has at present been
placed on the
press is of benefit only to the enemies of the people, that police rule
over word and thought cannot create honest citizens, and that law and
freedom are not incompatible with each other. Public discussion of all
such questions in several Gubernia Zemstvo Assemblies simultaneously
will undoubtedly meet with the greatest sympathy on the part of all
sections of the people and rouse the public conscience to energetic
activity. If, however, the Zemstvo fails to react in any way to the
present critical condition of Russia, then of course Messrs. the
Sipyagins and Wittes, after having deprived the Zemstvo of its role of
representative of the interests of labour, will not hesitate to bring it
into final ’conformity’ with the general structure of the institutions
of the Empire. What forms this ’conformity’ will take, we, who know the
shrewdness and resourcefulness of the country’s present rulers, are
decidedly at a loss to imagine. After all, the Minister of the Interior
had sufficient effrontery, and displayed amazing contempt for the
’pre-eminent’ social-estate of the Em p ire in investing its chosen
representatives—the Marshals of the Nobility with the despicable
role of spies, whose duty was to keep the lecturers and the content of
popular lectures under surveillance.

“Forthe reasons outlined above, we are of the opinion that our
inactivity and further meek resignation to all the experiments to which
the bureaucracy is subjecting the Zemstvo and all Russia constitute, not
only a form of suicide, but a grave crime against our native land. How
groundless, how insensate are the tactics of opportunism—the sale
of one’s ’birthright’ for a ’mess of pottage’—has been shown us
sufficiently clearly by life: the autocratic bureaucracy, having first
appropriated our birthright, has now also taken away from us the ’mess
of pottage.’ Step by step we have been deprived of almost all our civic
rights; the forty years that have elapsed since the inception of the
’great reforms’ have brought us back to the same point from which we
departed forty years ago when we embarked on those reforms. Have we much
to lose now? how can we justify continued silence on our part? how can
it be explained except by shameful cowardice and an utter lack of all
sense of civic duty?

“AsRussian citizens, and moreover Russian citizens in ’high
positions,’ we are in duty bound to defend the rights of the Russian
people, in duty bound to give a fitting reply to the autocratic
bureaucracy which is striving to crush the slightest manifestation of
liberty and independence In public life and to make abject slaves of the
whole Russian people. As Zemstvoists, we are especially obliged to
uphold the rights of the Zemstvo institutions, defend them against the
arbitrariness and despotism of the bureaucracy, and uphold their right
to independence an d the satisfaction in the broadest way of the needs
of all sections of the people.

“Letus then cease to be silent in the manner of school children
guilty of some misdemeanour; let us at last show that we are adult
citizens and let us demand what is our due—the claim to our ’birth
right,’ our civic rights.

“Theautocratic bureaucracy never grants anything voluntarily but
only what it is compelled to grant, although it then tries to make a
show of ceding its ’rights’ solely out of magnanimity. If It happens
to grant more than it was compelled to, it immediately withdraws all
superfluous concessions, as was the case with our ’great reforms.’ The
government showed no concern for the workers until it was faced with a
serious ’labour movement’ in the form of demonstrations of many
thousands of workers; it thereupon hastened to enact ’labour
legislation,’ which, although sufficiently hypocritical, was
nevertheless designed to meet at least some of the demands of the
workers and to pacify these formidable masses. For decades the
government crippled our students, our sisters, brothers and children, by
forbidding the slightest criticism of the ’educational system’ it had
devised, and savagely suppressing student ’disorders.’

“Butno sooner had these ’disorders’ turned into a mass strike,
than the academic machine came to a standstill, and the bureaucracy was
suddenly imbued with an ardent feeling of ’cordial concern’ for the
student youth; and those very demands to which only yesterday the sole
reply was the crack of Cossack whips are today proclaimed a government
programme for the ’reform of education.’

“Ofcourse, there is no small dose of hypocrisy In this
metamorphosis too, and yet.... Yet there can be no doubt of the fact
that the ’bureaucracy’ has been compelled openly to recognise and make a
fairly substantial concession to public opinion. And we, like the whole
of Russian society, like the whole of the Russian people, can count on
the recognition and realisation of our rights only if we boldly, openly,
concertedly, and persistently demand these rights.

“Inview of all these considerations, we have decided to address
the present letter to you, dear Sir, and to many other members of the
gubernia Zemstvos, with the appeal to help the present session of
Gubernia Zemstvo Assemblies raise, discuss, and adopt corresponding
decisions on the following questions:

“I.Reconsideration of the Statutes on Zemstvo Institutions and
their amendment along the following lines:

“a)the granting of equal suffrage to all groups of the population,
without distinction of social-estates, and with a considerable lowering
of the property qualification; b) the removal from the Zemstvo of
members representing social-estates as such; c) the Zemstvo to be freed
in all its activities from the tutelage of the administration, and to be
granted complete independence in all local affairs, on condition that it
submits to the laws of the country on the same basis as all other
persons and institutions; d) the jurisdiction of the Zemstvo to be
extended by granting it complete independence in attending to all local
interests and requirements insofar as they do not infringe on general
state interests; e) the repeal of the law limiting the right of the
Zemstvo to levy taxes; f) the Zemstvo to be granted the broadest rights
in the matter of spreading public education in every possible way;
moreover, the Zemstvo to be granted the right to supervise and improve
the educational as well as the economic aspect of this matter; g) the
abrogation of the above-mentioned Medical Regulations, which threaten
the Zemstvo medical service; h) food supply matters to be put back into
the hands of the Zemstvo, the latter also to be granted complete
independence in the organisation and conduct of its statistical and
assessment work; i) all Zemstvo business to be conducted
exclusively by elected Zemstvo people, who shall not be subject to
endorsement by the administration, still less be appointed against the
will of the Zemstvo Assemblies; j) the Zemstvo to be granted the right
to employ people exclusively at their own discretion without endorsement
by the administration; k) the Zemstvo to be granted the right freely to
discuss all questions affecting the state as a whole if they bear on
local interests and requirements, in addition to which all petitions of
the Zemstvo shall be considered without fail by higher government
institutions within a definitely designated period of time; l) all
Zemstvos to be granted the right to communicate with one an other as
well as to arrange congresses of Zemstvo representatives to consider
questions concerning all or several Zemstvos.

“II.Reconsideration and amendment of the Statutes on the Peasantry
with a view to granting them complete equality of rights with the other
social-estates.

“III.Revision of the taxation system with a view to equalising the
burden of taxation through progressive taxes on income derived from
property, and provided that certain minimum incomes be exempted from
taxation.

“Itis likewise highly desirable that the following points be
raised and considered in the Zemstvo Assemblies:

“IV.The re-establishment everywhere of courts conducted by
Justices of the Peace, as well as the repeal of all laws restricting the
competence of trial by jury.

“V.The granting of greater freedom of the press; the necessity of
abolishing preliminary censorship; the revision of the censorship
regulations so as to indicate definitely and explicitly what may and
what may not be published; the prohibition of arbitrary action by the
administrative authorities in censorship matters, and the trying of all
cases of press law violations exclusively in open session of the general
courts.

“VI.Revision of existing laws and ministerial edicts concerning
measures to protect the security of the state; the elimination, in this
sphere, of secret ’judgement’ by the administrative authorities, and
open trial of all cases of this kind by general court procedure.

“Trustingthat you will not refuse to assist in raising in your
Gubernia Zemstvo Assembly the general questions herein indicated, we
have the honour to request you to inform all Zemstvos as far as
possible, through councillors whom you know personally or who are known
to you, of any eventual decision of the Zemstvo Assembly. We likewise
hope that in most Zemstvos there will be a sufficient number of bold and
enterprising people who will succeed in getting the Zemstvo Assemblies
to adopt these demands. If we all present our just demands concertedly,
openly, and unequivocally, the bureaucracy will be compelled to yield,
as it always does when it encounters a rallied and enligtened [sic.]
force.

“Old Zemstvoists.”

Thisis a very instructive letter, which shows how life itself is forcing
even people who are little capable of struggle and who are most of all
absorbed in practical routine to act against the autocratic
government. And if this letter is compared, for instance, with such
writings as Mr. R.N.S.’s foreword to the Witte
Memorandum,[1]
the former, in my opinion, makes the better impression.

True,there are no “broad” political generalisations in the
letter—but then its authors are not making
“programmatic” declarations, but giving modest advice as to
how to begin agitation in practice. They have not indulged in
“flights of fancy” to the extent of speaking directly about
political liberty, but then neither have they indulged in phrase-mongering
about persons close to the throne who could possibly influence the
tsar. Nor do they falsely extol the “acts” of Alexander II,
but, on the contrary, there is derision of the “great reforms”
(in quotation marks). They find in themselves the frankness and courage to
rise resolutely against the “Zemstvo opportunists,” without fear of
declaring war on the “shameful cowardice”, and without
currying favour with the particularly backward liberals.

Wedo not yet know what success has attended the appeal of the old
Zemstvoists, but at any rate we think that their initiative deserves full
support. The recent revival of the Zemstvo movement is in general an
extremely interesting phenomenon. The authors of the letter them selves
mention how the movement has spread: started by the workers, it has
extended to the students and is now being taken up by Zemstvoists. All
these three social elements are thus arranging themselves in proper
succession in accordance with the diminishing order of their numerical
strength, public alertness, social and political radicalism, and
revolutionary determination.

Somuch the worse for our enemy. The less revolutionary the elements that
rise up against him, the better it is for us, unreserved opponents of the
autocracy and of the existing economic system as a whole.

Letus convey our greetings to the new protesters and, consequently, to
our new allies. Let us help them.

Youcan see that they are poor; they can only put out a small leaflet,
issued in a worse form than the leaflets
of the workers and students. We are rich. We shall publish it in printed
form. We shall give publicity to this new slap in the face to the Obmanov
tsars. This slap in the face is all the more remarkable, the more
“respectable” the people are who deal it.

Youcan see that they are weak; they have so little con tact with the
people that their letter passes from hand to hand as if it were actually a
copy of a private letter. We are strong. We can and must circulate this
letter “among the people,” and primarily among the proletariat,
which is prepared for and has already commenced the struggle for the
freedom of the whole people.

Youcan see that they are timid; they are only just beginning to extend
the scope of their pure Zemstvo agitation. We are bolder than they are;
our workers have already gone through the “stage” (a stage
that was forced on them) of economic agitation alone. Let us set them an
example of how to fight. For if the workers fought for a demand like the
annulment of the “Provisional Rules,” in order to voice a protest
against the autocracy, then the violation by the administration of even
the faintest trace of what is nonetheless
“sell-government” may constitute no less important
ground!

Buthere we are stopped short by all sorts of supporters of
“economism,” overt and covert, conscious and unconscious. Who needs
this support of the Zemstvoists by the workers? they ask us. Is it not the
Zemstvoists alone? Is it not people who are perhaps dissatisfied only
because the government favours the industrial capitalists more than the
agricultural? Is it not the bourgeoisie alone, whose desires go no further
than “the spirited struggle of the economic groups of the country”?

Whoneeds it? Well, first of all, and more than all, the working class
itself. This “only really revolutionary class” of
present-day society would not be a revolutionary class in deed, if it
did not take advantage of every occasion for dealing a new blow
at its bitterest enemy. And the words about political agitation and
political struggle in our statements and programmes would be hollow
sounds, if we let slip the favourable opportunities for struggle that
present themselves when even former allies of this enemy (the men
of the sixties) and in part also his present allies (the opportunist
Zemstvoists and feudal-minded landlords) are beginning to quarrel with
him.

Letus then carefully follow Zemstvo developments, the rise and spread (or
fall and ebb) of the new wave of protests. Let us try to acquaint the
working class more fully with the history of the Zemstvo, with the
government’s concessions to society in the sixties, with the lying
speeches of the tsars and their tactics: first to grant a “mess of
pottage” instead of the “birthright”—and then (on the
basis of this retention of the “birthright”) to take away the mess
of pottage itself. Let the workers learn to see through these old police
tactics in all their manifestations. Such discernment is also
indispensable in our struggle for our “birthright,” for the
freedom of the proletariat to wage a struggle against all
economic and social oppression. Let us tell the workers in the study
circles about the Zemstvo and its attitude to the government; let us issue
leaflets on the Zemstvo protests; let us work in such a way that to every
insult the tsarist government offers to any Zemstvo that is at all honest
the proletariat will be able to reply with demonstrations against the
high-handed governors, the bashi-bazouk gendarmes, and the Jesuit
censors. The party of the proletariat must learn to denounce and
stigmatise every servant of the autocracy for every
outrage and violence directed against any section of society, any nation
or race.

Notes

[1]
The reference is to “The Autocracy and the Zemstvo,” which
P. B. Struve (under the pen-name of R. N. S.) wrote as a foreword to a
“confidential memorandum” of S. Y. Witte, Minister of Finance,
and which was published by Zarya in Stuttgart in 1901. This
foreword was strongly criticised by Lenin in his work, “The
Persecutors of the Zemstvo and the Hannibals of Liberalism” (see
present edition, Vol. 5).